A sign of politics going barking mad this week was the launch of Animals Count, a party that aims to “establish a voice for the animals” and create “a world in which animals are not exploited” for food, consumer goods, sport or scientific research.

Animals count? No, they don’t, except the odd horse trained to stamp a hoof. Nor do they read, write or reason. Which is why we don’t let them vote. But Animals Count wants us to vote on their behalf, for example to set up an animal NHS; some may think the human health service just about meets that standard.

According to the BBC the Animals Count founder, Jasmijn de Boo, told her packed London launch: “First slaves were liberated. Then women and children. Now it is time to do the same for the animals.” Of course, no sane person would imply that women are no better than bitches, children are literally like kids or that slaves are somehow on a par with apes. Would they?

None of this would matter much if it were just a few batty bunny-lovers. Yet their aims are popular in our human-baiting times. The Party for the Animals just had two MPs elected in the Netherlands. And despite the claims that animal issues rarely top the agenda in Britain, there have been red-blooded rows and new laws about hunting, animal research, live animal exports, intensive farming and how we look after pets.

Animals Count is targeting the Welsh assembly elections, not because Welshmen love their sheep, but because of the PR electoral system. Like other outsider parties today they may pick up some disaffected votes, as a sort of BMP — British Misanthropic Party. And in any case they should help to shepherd the big parties further along the road to Disneyfication.

Why all this political zoophilia now? It is less about any rising up of animals, which remain as ignorant as ever, than a declining belief in our unique humanity. However, the hard truth is that human emancipation and animal liberation are contradictory, not complementary. Intensive farming and animal research have helped to give us longer, healthier lives. And using animals for food, consumer goods, entertainment and sport helps to make life worthwhile. A world without the “exploitation of animals” would be unfit for human habitation.

• The bad news: prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences rose by 26.5 per cent in 2005-06. The good news: that equates to an increase of nine cases, making an annual total of 43. There were 12 cases in July 2005, in six of which the defendant referred to the July 7 London bombings.

  So much for the oft-predicted “Islamophobic backlash”. Presenting the figures, the Director of Public Prosecutions seemed surprised that “the fears of a large rise in offences appear to be unfounded”. Unlike the entirely founded fears that the authorities are suffering from Islamophobia-phobia.

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